by Anne Mateer
James nodded. Dan joined him.
One question answered. A thousand more to go.
Thunder rumbled outside. I led the mules and horse into empty stalls and gathered my shawl again for the return trip through the rain. The boys’ clothes still dripped from our first excursion. Oh, well. No harm done going back through the rain, then.
I let them run ahead, though I didn’t linger far behind. “Stop on the porch,” I called as they bolted through the gate and up the back walkway. Then I spied a blanketed horse tied to a fence post.
I left the milk bucket on the porch and sprinted past the boys. “Strip off your wet clothes and run upstairs for dry ones,” I called as my wet shawl slapped against the board floor of the porch. I followed watery footprints exactly where I knew they’d lead—Aunt Adabelle’s bedroom.
A man in a dark suit stood over the bed. Ollie watched from behind him, Janie quiet in her arms. I took the baby from her as the man—the doctor, I assumed from the black bag he carried—turned. Ollie threw herself at his middle. His heavy gray moustache twitched as the girl’s sobs broke the unnatural quiet.
I blinked back tears. Tears of grief and relief. The doctor looked at me from under scruffy brows before he turned his attention back to Ollie.
“Hush now, child.” He knelt down. Her head moved to his shoulder, her arms stealing around his neck. “Miss Ada isn’t sick anymore. Ye didn’t want her to be sick, remember?” His r’s rolled slightly, hinting of a homeland beyond American shores.
Ollie shook her head as he lifted her. I hushed a whimpering Janie. His gaze moved past me, to the doorway. I whipped around. James and Dan stood naked and unashamed, their eyes big in bloodless faces.
My cheeks warmed. “Clothes on, boys.” I shooed them from the room, blocking the doorway with my body. They ran up the stairs. I bit my lip and turned back to the old man.
He returned Ollie to the floor. “If ye’ll see to the little ones,” he said to her, “we’ll tend to things here.”
She nodded and took Janie from me. I stepped aside. After one long look at the still figure on the bed, Ollie retreated to the chaos upstairs.
The man nodded at me after Ollie disappeared. “Sheriff told me ye’d come.”
“Yes, but not soon enough.” I glanced at Aunt Adabelle’s waxen face, a face that resembled the doll Daddy bought me for my tenth birthday.
“T’wasn’t much to be done. The Spanish flu hits hard and quick. But at least ye can care for the children.”
“The children.” I felt my whole face crinkle with a frown. “I understand this is their daddy’s farm?”
He lifted one of Aunt Adabelle’s cold hands, laid it gently across her chest. “Frank Gresham. His wife, Clara, didn’t make it through her last birthing.”
“Janie.” My whisper faded amidst the thumping overhead.
“Frank’d already been shipped to France. Adabelle moved in. She’s been helping out around here since they were babes, all three. Took to them as her family, seeing as she had no one else.”
My face crumpled with sadness instead of confusion. My aunt had no one else because Mama refused to speak to her. How could Mama have let it come to this?
The thumping from upstairs calmed a bit, the quiet silencing my questions.
“Ye’ll want to dress her, I think.” The doctor’s words broke through my musings and stole all moisture from my mouth. Did he think I knew how to do what he asked of me? Weren’t there women in this town—Aunt Adabelle’s friends—who would be better suited to such tasks?
He walked from the room. I followed, shutting the door behind me. “Ye won’t have time for laying her out. We need to get her buried. Likely there’ll be few who can leave their own to attend.”
I didn’t know which disturbed me more: his reading my mind or his intimation that Aunt Adabelle wasn’t the only fatality. I knew influenza could take the old and the young and the ones already sick with other ailments, but my aunt didn’t fit those descriptions.
“Will someone come for her?” croaked from my throat.
The doctor scratched behind his ear, agitating a tuft of hair that afterward refused to lie flat again. “Tomorrow morning. Early. Can ye have everyone ready?”
“Yes.” But could I really ready a woman for burial? Then a more terrible thought struck. Could I prepare these children to witness it?
“I guess the children have to be there.” I ventured the words past my fear, hoping for a tiny reprieve.
He answered in a grunt I interpreted as agreement. “No one else to care for them. Everyone around here has their own to tend.” Did I read fear in his face, too?
My fingers curled around one another as I gathered my courage. “We’ll be ready.”
His eyes turned stern before he spoke again. “And there’s to be no church or school until ye hear further. Don’t want this spreading any more than it has.”
His words sank deep and heavy, like a boulder dropped in a pond. He opened the back door to leave.
“Wait.” I followed him out onto the porch, the boys’ wet clothes tangling my feet. “Will you please send a telegram to my mother? Margaret Hendricks in Downington, Oklahoma. Could you tell her . . . what happened?”
His shoulders sagged as if I’d handed him a fifty-pound sack of flour to carry along with his regular load. But he didn’t falter as he jotted the information onto a pad of paper, then climbed into his buggy. I stood in the yard, arms across my chest.
In the morning we would bury my mother’s sister. By tomorrow evening, I hoped to hear from Mama. She’d tell me what to do next.
The next morning didn’t proceed as I’d imagined. But how could it? Four children clustered about me, eager for adult attention, while the weight of my aunt’s unattended body hovered over all.
“Can’t we see Miss Ada?” James pestered.
“Not now.”
Dan turned the doorknob of the bedroom.
“No!” I flew to him, frightening Janie to tears, dragging Dan away as his feet kicked air. James’s wide, solemn stare poked holes in my resolve to be strong.
“Ollie, spoon out the oatmeal. Boys, sit down and eat.” I set Dan on the bench and scooted him close to the table. They all complied, eventually. Just as they scraped the last bits of breakfast from their bowls, heavy footsteps paraded across the back porch.
I pulled off my apron and wiped Janie’s face. “Ollie, take everyone upstairs.”
As soon as the stomping quieted, I opened the kitchen door. Water dripped from the brim of one man’s hat. Two others stood behind him, a coffin on its end between them. Older men. I guessed the younger ones were all off at war.
“You’re here for . . . her.” The words stuck in my throat like a spoon in overcooked oatmeal.
The man nodded. “Mr. Crenshaw said to tell you he’d come for y’all in his automobile.”
“Mr. Crenshaw?”
“Owns the store over t’town. Don’t know if that new-fangled car of his will make it through this mud, though.”
I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. Mr. Crenshaw with a car. We wouldn’t have to ride with Aunt Adabelle’s body.
The men stepped inside. I couldn’t bear to see the coffin enter the house empty and leave full, so I hurried upstairs and helped dress the children in their Sunday best, all the while listening to the bumps and stomps of men shouldering their sad load through the house and out the back door.
A little while later, the jangle and squeak of horse harnesses called me to the window. I watched the wagon pull away, the plain box filling the bed, the horses splashing mud and water with every step.
“Mr. Crenshaw will be here soon.” I spoke more to fill the silence than to inform the children. “In his automobile.”
A spark lit in the boys’ eyes, grief over Miss Ada momentarily forgotten. They hurried down the stairs and planted themselves at the front window in the parlor, next door to the room where their caretaker had lain. Thankfully, the men h
ad closed the door when they had taken her from the house for the last time.
When the ah-ooga of a horn shouted Mr. Crenshaw’s arrival, James and Dan beat us outside. Ollie, Janie, and I arrived on the front porch to find a scarecrow of a man holding a boy in each lanky arm. An umbrella teetered over his head, keeping them dry and clean. For the moment, at least.
“Mr. Crenshaw?”
“Yes, miss.” He turned and stalked down the front walk, his long legs needing only a few strides to reach the car. Ollie dashed between raindrops and climbed into the back seat with the boys. The baby and I settled in the front beside Mr. Crenshaw.
The tires spun in the deepening mud, but they soon took hold and we jumped forward. I stared straight ahead, wondering where the cemetery was located, who would be there, and if Mr. Crenshaw would bring us home again. And I worried about the children. Janie, I knew, sat blissfully ignorant while Ollie remained painfully aware. She’d explained to her brothers about Miss Ada yesterday. At least, she’d said she had. I waited for their questions about heaven and death and funerals, but none came. How much did they understand? Their mother had left them less than a year ago. But did James and Dan really understand that Miss Ada wasn’t coming back?
The car slipped and slid down the muddy road. I gripped the edge of the seat with one hand and Janie with the other. Finally, we passed the train depot and turned onto the main street. Had it been just over a day since I’d arrived in this place? The girl who stepped off the train that evening seemed far away from me now.
I noticed more than when I had arrived, albeit through a curtain of rain. One large sign over a storefront read Crenshaw’s Dry Goods. Other businesses flanked our silent driver’s establishment, but I didn’t take the time to read the name of each one. A few houses straggled within sight of the meager storefronts. Then the town gave way to empty space, to pristine land broken by a white-steepled church, its stone-dotted cemetery huddled to one side.
Mr. Crenshaw parked close to the white pickets edging holy ground and silenced the engine. He handed me an umbrella and took one himself. The drizzle picked up its pace, as if it dared us to race it to the newly dug grave. Dan and James tried to oblige the challenge. Ollie and I held them by their shirt collars in an attempt to keep them beneath the umbrellas.
A man stood beside the hole in the ground. His face reminded me of Daddy’s droopy-jowled hound dog. He held a black book I assumed to be a Bible. Beside him, the fresh-cut boards of the coffin were already smeared brown. I tried to imagine Aunt Adabelle resting peacefully inside—clean and dry. Not the Aunt Adabelle I’d seen on her deathbed. The one I remembered from my childhood. The one with soft curves and laughing eyes.
Ollie must have been thinking the same thing. She slipped her hand into mine. “My mama always said rainy days were the best ones for sleeping.”
I squeezed her hand and managed to give her a tight smile, but from the edge of my vision I noticed James at the lip of the hole, peering downward. Dan inched forward to join his brother. Both of them stood out of my umbrella’s reach now, hair plastered to their faces, clothes clinging to their small frames. I plopped the baby into Ollie’s arms and stepped toward the boys. Black mud captured my boot, oozing over the ankle-high top. I managed to yank it loose as I reached for Dan’s hand and led it to my skirt. He grasped the fabric in his chubby fingers, as I’d intended. Then I rested my hand on James’s shoulder, keeping him near me, both boys half under the shelter of my umbrella.
I didn’t hear the preacher’s words. Instead, my eyes wandered to the little ones now in my charge. I thought of their soldier father. Missing his daughter’s birth and his wife’s final breath. And now the trusted friend who cared for his children had left them in my inexperienced hands. And me a perfect stranger to them all. I would write to him. Set him at ease over the state of his family and his home.
The church bell pealed. My head turned toward the sound, scraping a gaze across three other muddied mounds. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. In a town this small, with many of its men off at war, four deaths this close together would be a devastating thing.
James whipped around, his small fingers cupped beneath his freckled nose. Liquid red dripped through his pale fingers. It took me a moment to register it as blood.
Blood.
Bile rose in my throat as I pulled a handkerchief from my sleeve and tried to mop up the mess. But it kept coming.
Ollie thrust Janie into my arms. I juggled the baby and the umbrella as I pushed down into an awkward squat, cringing over the remaining soreness in my ankle. Dan pulled on my skirt, his weight almost knocking me backward onto the soggy ground.
“It’s okay, James.” Ollie calmly lifted the skirt of her white dress and pinched the tip of his nose.
“He ain’t sick, is he?”
My head jerked toward one of the men who’d come with the wagon. He spit into the rain.
“No.” I hoped the snap in my voice smacked him as firmly as an open palm, but his words stirred my insecurities.
“His nose bleeds sometimes,” Ollie told us, finding a clean spot on her dress and pinching again.
Dan started to cry, hiding his head in my skirts as I forced myself to stand.
Over and over and over again Ollie sullied her dress with her brother’s blood. Her crisp, white dress wilted with rain and mud and blood. The dress, she’d told me, that Miss Ada had finished just before the influenza forced her into bed.
The preacher said amen. James’s nose stopped bleeding. I blew out a long breath, anxious to get the children back home without further mishap.
The men threaded two ropes beneath the coffin, one on each end, readying it to lower into the ground. Straining at each rope-end, the four men held on with gloved hands, letting the thickness slide through in small intervals as rain waterfalled over the brims of their hats. But wet took its toll, whether on gloves or rope or wood. Someone, something, lost its grip. The wooden box tumbled from its rope cradle, landing at the bottom of the hole with a squishy thud.
Dan stepped forward, peering into Miss Ada’s grave. “Uh-oh,” he said. “It fell down.”
I closed my eyes, praying I wouldn’t let loose the scream in my head. “Yes, dear.” What else could I say?
Ollie pulled her brothers away from the edge, afraid, I think, that they would pitch in headlong, as well. I thanked the preacher and the other men, as Mama would have expected, while Ollie herded the boys to the car. No matter about umbrellas now. Maybe the rain would wash some of the muck from our clothes. With Janie in my arms, I stood graveside another moment. Shovelfuls of mud dropped with jarring splats on the wood below. I hurried away, wishing I could cover my ears with my hands.
Then I recognized James’s small voice through the clatter. “Miss Ada’s gone to heaven to be with Mama, right, Ollie?”
“Yes, James. Mama and Miss Ada are in heaven and Daddy’s in France. But Daddy’ll come home soon. And I’ll take care of you until then. Don’t worry.”
James spied me, his smile quivering. I tried to put on a brave face, but as the thick mud sucked at my boots, I thought of my aunt at the bottom of that hole. And I thanked God that the rain hid my tears from the children.
I half-expected Mama to come marching into the house after the last train whistle blew that evening. But she didn’t. And no one delivered a telegram from her, either. Soon, an empty Sunday stretched before us.
My whole body ached. A hundred times that morning I felt my cheeks, my forehead, the back of my neck, checking for fever. But though my fingers tingled cold on my skin, no unnatural heat warmed them.
We needed a quiet, peaceful activity. “Do you have any books we could read?” I asked. Ollie nodded and scampered to a shelf in the corner while I lit the kindling in the parlor fireplace.
I figured they owned a Bible for sure, which would be quite appropriate for the day, but I hoped she’d return with a story that would capture their attention for a length of time.
The litt
le flame caught, then blazed to lick at the larger logs. I warmed my hands for a few minutes before establishing myself on the sofa. The children scooted close. Ollie handed me a book, a piece of red silk jutting from the pages about a third of the way through.
“Miss Ada was reading this to us,” she said. “Before.”
Before. So much in that one word. Before Miss Ada got sick. Before Miss Ada went to heaven. Before. Sometimes it was good to go back to before.
I ran my fingers over the gold-embossed letters stamped on the front and smiled. Heidi. “My mama read this to me when I was about your age.” I lifted James’s chin. “And to my brother, as well.”
“Where’s your brother?” he asked, suddenly interested.
“In France, like your daddy.”
“He knows Daddy?” Dan said.
“No, I don’t think so.” But I smiled, imagining these children’s father—Frank, was it?—crossing paths with my brother, Will. What if they met? Became friends?
“Hush now and let Bekah read.” Ollie tapped the book before poking Janie’s thumb between the baby’s rosebud lips.
The fire crackled, warming the room. Janie fell asleep in a bundle on the floor while Heidi’s world stole all thoughts of grief from the rest of us. The fire died a bit. We read on until my stomach rumbled loudly.
James sat up. “I’m hungry, too.”
A soft knock at the back door destroyed the last vestige of our peaceful tableau.
James raced from the room. I followed, stepping over sleeping Janie at my feet.
“Why’re you here, Sheriff? Nobody did nothin’ wrong.” James’s little-boy swagger carried from the kitchen.
I arrived as Sheriff Jeffries ruffled the wispy curls on top of James’s head. “I’m glad to hear it, son.” But when the sheriff raised his gaze to me, his eyes lost their twinkle. “How are you?”
“Fine.” His simple question stirred a nervous twitter in my belly.
He glanced down at James, and I breathed in relief. Of course. He’d have heard about the nosebleed yesterday and come to check on us. Mr. Crenshaw had said someone would.